Interesting.

For "live" playing I also use a limited number of voices (about 20).

When creating / tweaking midifiles I also use the Cakewalk voice editor to audition / select from the full list, so there's a lot more variations used there.

However, in Midi file edits I sometimes find it necessary to use controllers, RPN and NRPN data to adjust the sounds I use. Not often, but it happens.

So if someone comes up and says "Heres a keyboard with 30 sounds but they're all magnificent and totally editable" I might be tempted

Except I dont have time to edit very much...

And (as has been discussed elsewhere on this forum) for midi file playback you don't want standout voices, you want voices that fit together without one thing dominating. You need the "wow" factor for lead voices.

The facility to build your own perfect set of keyboard voices is to a degree already available at the higher end of the arranger market. Its called sampling! However, as a live player I have always steered clear of sampling because (a) I'm basically lazy and (b) it takes a lot of effort (or money) to get a set of samples for a voice which are of better quality than those built into the waveform ROM on modern keyboards.

You do get the impression sometimes that the hundreds of voices available are just slight variations of a theme; its a bit like those handheld video games with "1296 games" which are just 5 games with lots of slight variations (like number of aliens, difficulty level etc etc). I usually find theres about 3 games I actually like so the rest can go fly. Of course the wife likes a different 3 games.....